November 21, 2016

  • Rare Deems Taylor Work

     Taylor: Lost Orchestral Works, Vol. 2
    Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
    Navona Records 6066
    Total Time:  15:39
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    You would probably not know it, but 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of American composer Deems Taylor (1885-1966).  Taylor was one of the most respected composers and music commentators of the early 20th Century.  In fact, most film lovers will have seen him as the narrator for Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1939).  Taylor’s gorgeous orchestral music, a mixture of Impressionism and late-Romanticism, fell flat on the academic avant-garde by the 1940s and 1950s.  Like so many excellent American composer’s of the early 20th Century, his music was all but ignored by those looking to take music on the often less accessible dodecaphonic and atonal route.  It is still fairly rare to hear a Taylor work in concert, let alone to find it on disc.

    That makes this new Navona EP both exciting and frustrating.  One might have held out hope that maybe the Moravian orchestra might bring to light any number of Taylor’s works not committed to CD.  What is somewhat exciting is that they have recorded this Three Century Suite which was never published and is stored at the composer’s archives at Yale.  The five-movement work was written in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  It explores a semi-Baroque sense of the suite, a shift in music that one finds appearing in counterbalance to the folk-influenced styles of the period.  The opening “Pavan” moves through a few key changes with delicious orchestration.  It is followed by three brief dance-like movements: a sarabande, a scherzo-like jig, and a rigadoon (here recalling part of the second movement).  The piece concludes with a fairly romantic waltz, “Bartholomew Fair.”  The movements sort of play out continuously.  At times the music does feel a bit like an older man looking back to an earlier time as the piece seems to fall closer to a Delian or Holst orchestral piece.  Certainly it is reminiscent of Taylors work in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

    Navona recorded this performance back in June and rushed it to downloadable availability as well as a little album with notes.  The Moravian ensemble appears on many of Navona’s releases.  Here they manage fairly well through this music.  The sound feels just a tad dry at times where it feels the music needs more ambient luster, but that is not enough of a distraction to encourage any lover of American Music to track down this recording.  It just makes one wish someone would get around to recording the composer’s music more.  The ensemble does a fine job with the piece overall.  Other than a classic Gerard Schwarz recording for Delos (now on a re-issued Naxos) there is nothing to be had of this important American composer's work.